Spleen City - Short Film

T

Twodogs

Member
Hi!

I'm a french director from Paris. I'm here to present you my first movie, Spleen City. I wrote, directed and produced it.

The story takes place in a ghost town. Two guys, lost in this town, meet themselves nedd each other to finish the day. Sorry for my english!

The length is 34 minutes. The movie is availble here http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=LOCCTSUG

Sorry to give you an heavy file, sorry for the time to get it, i didn't want to sacrifice the quality of the compression. You can also watch the trailer here http://www.myspace.com/spleencity

Have a good time and be free to let me your feelings about my work...Thank you very much!
 
how did you get your upload to look so good?? I'm trying to upload my TV series and the compression makes it look very pixelated no matter what settings or size it is, it looks exactly the same no matter what...am i doing something wrong? Or did you shoot this on HD and export it out a different way??

by the way, nice job, it looks amazing
 
Last edited:
Hello!

I spent several weeks to find the best compression. I shooted with the HVX200. My method, a first compression just to resize the video, for exemple quicktime without compression with the size you want and after, a second compression with flash codec and it's done!
 
watched the trailer
downloading short now.
  • Nice photography in the trailer.
  • A little too Magic Bullety for my taste. You have some really nice light and you are kind of ruining it with the grading, IMHO. Maybe when I see the whole short my opinion will change, but ... Anyway, my feeling in general is that grading should be like scoring or lights and enhance the story or mood without stepping out in front of absolutely every other production element and saying "hey notice me" ... there are notable exceptions of course, but when it steps out front like that it can take you out of the movie .... might try a contrasty bleach bypass before the orange filter and / or apply the orange tint at a slightly lower opacity, this will get you some white in the image, right now we never go to white (or at least get close to it) in images where their would be white, we only get to light orange - and that's what makes the grading seem so extreme. You don't have to go to pure white, but such heavy tinting pulled me out of it in the trailer at least. Maybe in the full version it will do the opposite and pull me in.
  • The gun shot. I think your flash is acceptible, but the smoke is just absolutely horrible. you would be better off cutting the smoke entirely and just having the flash - much better off. Unless it is a musket there will not be so much smoke and even then it would not be so white, it would be black, and even then it would not be so opaque. The color is ok for a modern gun but it is just to opaque and billowy and I think keeps coming out for too long. I think you will be in good shape if you bring the opacity of the smoke way way way down. Remember that you would only see the smoke in certain lighting conditions - probably not in a such a dark space. Also remember that the flash should be 1 frame and 1 frame only. What you can do that's cool is do a power mask or a couple of them to make it look like the muzzle flash illuminated the shooters face and the grocery shelf for a second. Just double the video layer and make one layer brighter than the other and make feathered ovals revealing the brighter layer where you think there might be some additional light, again be subtle. With this I find I can stretch the power windows to 2 or 3 frames if I significantly reduce the brightness on frames 2 and three. So frame 1 of the power window is the full effect then frame 2 diminishes to 50 - 30% of the effect and frame three diminishes to 25 -10%
  • music seems quite nice.
will watch full short later today.

Congrats on getting your first short in the can. That's an awesome achievement as much as people who say they want to be filmmakers are constantly making excuses not to make films. :beer:
 
thanks man, trying it now. Check out the quality I am talking about over at palmettothetvseries.com/content/section/5/30/

you will see the pixels like crazy. Did you shoot on the P2 cards in HD? I have an HVX200 and a DVX100a that we shot this on.
 
Jack Daniel Stanley said:
watched the trailer
downloading short now.
  • Nice photography in the trailer.
  • A little too Magic Bullety for my taste. You have some really nice light and you are kind of ruining it with the grading, IMHO. Maybe when I see the whole short my opinion will change, but ... Anyway, my feeling in general is that grading should be like scoring or lights and enhance the story or mood without stepping out in front of absolutely every other production element and saying "hey notice me" ... there are notable exceptions of course, but when it steps out front like that it can take you out of the movie .... might try a contrasty bleach bypass before the orange filter and / or apply the orange tint at a slightly lower opacity, this will get you some white in the image, right now we never go to white (or at least get close to it) in images where their would be white, we only get to light orange - and that's what makes the grading seem so extreme. You don't have to go to pure white, but such heavy tinting pulled me out of it in the trailer at least. Maybe in the full version it will do the opposite and pull me in.
  • The gun shot. I think your flash is acceptible, but the smoke is just absolutely horrible. you would be better off cutting the smoke entirely and just having the flash - much better off. Unless it is a musket there will not be so much smoke and even then it would not be so white, it would be black, and even then it would not be so opaque. The color is ok for a modern gun but it is just to opaque and billowy and I think keeps coming out for too long. I think you will be in good shape if you bring the opacity of the smoke way way way down. Remember that you would only see the smoke in certain lighting conditions - probably not in a such a dark space. Also remember that the flash should be 1 frame and 1 frame only. What you can do that's cool is do a power mask or a couple of them to make it look like the muzzle flash illuminated the shooters face and the grocery shelf for a second. Just double the video layer and make one layer brighter than the other and make feathered ovals revealing the brighter layer where you think there might be some additional light, again be subtle. With this I find I can stretch the power windows to 2 or 3 frames if I significantly reduce the brightness on frames 2 and three. So frame 1 of the power window is the full effect then frame 2 diminishes to 50 - 30% of the effect and frame three diminishes to 25 -10%
  • music seems quite nice.
will watch full short later today.

Congrats on getting your first short in the can. That's an awesome achievement as much as people who say they want to be filmmakers are constantly making excuses not to make films. :beer:
Click to expand...

I totally agree with you about the shot gun, the smoke is awful and i'm working on it

about the light and colour, the compression of the trailer is ver very warm and orange. The compression on the film is ver very better and the orange is more yellow. I would like a mood near some ellroy book with more glamour.
 
i thought the film looked great, cinematography and colors. Of course everyone has their own opinion on their likes and dislikes.

I tried your method and it still looks bad, i really do not know what I'm doing wrong...
 
Taking a look now, going to be a while to download :)

Edit, ok so it JUST finished. About 2 hours.

I open it, and its an audio file? WHAT THE HECK? lol
 
Last edited:
It looks really, really good.
I think, for your first film, it's a great achievement.
Congrats.
I'm looking forward to seeing the whole thing.
 
Cool trailer... very cinematic!

The color grading is a bit Magic Bullet but I think it works in this case (at least for the trailer).

Looking forward to checking out the full film later in the week.
:thumbup:
 
I really like the cinematography. Do you have production photos of the lighting set ups? Also, did you use magic bullet?
 
You will laugh but i don't know Magic bullet!

I worked on the photography in a professional laboratory with Quantel's EQ

I will post pictures of the movie without post production, you will be surprised, the picture is totally neutral
 
I thought the coloring/lighting was gorgeous. Nothing wrong with adding your unique style to the picture. And you obviously have a incorporated a good deal of production value.

Very stylish!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top